Early Retirement Extreme Forums

sold (short): AXL, MGA

Just remembered I still have ERUS in another account... may want to sell that as well.

I bought more gold.

Finally! (Feds raised by 0.25%)

(Also, just for the record, told you so, a few months ago.)

Despite my prediction that Mr. Market had the rate hike priced in, he appears to not have done so.

December 2015 - Fired our full service broker and took over (DH and I giving mutual decision inputs). Saved as much commission every year as I would have earned at part time job.
In January 2017 started adding to more index funds (DVY, VOO, MDY, IJR).
This fall, thinking the US stocks overvalued (very high P/E v historically avgs), I took profits on Chevron and Google (sold off all of both). Sold Disney (slight loss) and Alaska Air (slight profit) (legacy from full service brokerage days which were basically once a month three way phone calls with consensus decisions made between me, DH, and broker).

Recently sold off 20% of Apple across all accounts. We d been buying it for years and our portfolio was way over-concentrated in apple because the stock has done so well.
This week: took some profit from MDY (mid cap 600 index fund) for rebalancing, and sold some vanguard short term bond fund. Examined cash and bond amounts across all accounts.

Decided to start buying gold (GLD). A few years ago I owned GLD and sold it off after it had a good run up. (don't have the exact figures anymore). Looking at the two year prices of GLD, it looked to me like a good time to get back in with a very small percentage of cash on hand. The thing about gold is that it just sits there not paying a dividend while you hope it gets a run up from other people. My idea is to not be greedy and if it gets a good run up in the next 12 months, sell it.

Basically since December 2015 I've been moving some individual stocks off the table, buying some broad USA market stock and short term bond index funds plus recent purchase of owens-corning but leaving a healthy cash position in case of a pullback.

Well, Trump won. Boohoo. On the bright side, Ron Paul got his first elector vote ever!

In light of the win, I'm buying (was short): MGA, OIH, XME
still short GM, AXL

bryan wrote: Just remembered I still have ERUS in another account... may want to sell that as well.

Just waiting to hear back from a specific charity (if they accept gifted shares).

Bought some PFE today. Didn't expect the good timing either.

ABBV and CAH are down nicely from the press conference yesterday. I'm very tempted to pick them up, as I doubt anything will actually be done about drug pricing.

Bought some more Engie today, one of the best bargains in Europe in my opinion.
Now my second largest single stock holding after Royal Dutch

Sold D.UN for 20% gain (4 month hold). Undervalued western Canada REIT that finally adjusted. Reaped profit.

Bought SJR.B on a bad quarter. Long on the cell phone network expansion plans. Bought ENF because I wanted dividend generating large pipeliner. Bought FTS the ultimate dividend all-star on a pullback. Medium to long on all of them.

I have not posted in this thread in awhile. These days I've been selling off the IBM and GS accumulated over past couple years, which will go on all 2017 until its all gone. Accumulating MCD, NKE, and XLP. Re-accumulating TLT and O sold last year. Sold most of my WY in December. Sold part of UUP accumulated last summer/fall. I bought a little GLD in November and December, but nothing more. Been using covered calls both on entries (buy-writes) and exits.

I'm not sure what I was thinking WRT tax brackets. Checking my last tax return, I am clearly within the 15%. This year I'll have a larger buffer and can harvest a lot of long term if I want.

Sold CAT & MDU this past week.

Nice to see you be able to get out of CAT.

@Dragline
Nike is a decent value here for the long term.

Seppia wrote:Bought some more Engie today, one of the best bargains in Europe in my opinion.
Now my second largest single stock holding after Royal Dutch

Hi Seppia, here another european investor glad to read and learn

Now that I read your last buy, I would like to ask you a couple of questions:

- What are your prospects regarding Engie?
- What's your opinion on another utility, the italian ERG?

Thanks!

deleted double post.

cmonkey wrote:If my income didn't push me into the 25% bracket, I'd be selling CAT & CMI as well as MDU. Up 50%, 50% and 60% on these. I'd love to move that to something else, but as it is, I'd lose 15% if I sold.

It's funny that you wrote this on 12/8, because we sold our CMI from a taxable account on 12/7. I was wondering how much money you made to push your LT capital gains into the 25% bracket (but then saw your later correction). We sold quite a bit of overvalued* stuff in December and used some of the proceeds to pay down a mortgage on rental property. Now we're waiting for a stunning crash to re-invest the rest.

*inexpert opinion

Edit: ..."stunning crash" is a bit dramatic and certainly not something we're hoping for. Aside from the bigger, less selfish picture, it would hurt our remaining investments. We're just looking for some quality stocks to become better deals than they are now.

Dunkelheit wrote:

Seppia wrote:Bought some more Engie today, one of the best bargains in Europe in my opinion.
Now my second largest single stock holding after Royal Dutch

Hi Seppia, here another european investor glad to read and learn

Now that I read your last buy, I would like to ask you a couple of questions:

- What are your prospects regarding Engie?
- What's your opinion on another utility, the italian ERG?

Thanks!

Engie is taking a pounding because of their now not so profitable shift to renewables and gas.
In my opinion they are just doing what the French do best with their state owned companies: plan VERY long term.
The TGV project for example started in the late 70s and went break even in the 2000s, but they were by then in a position to profit massively from their technological edge (except for the Japanese, nobody had such a great technology in super fast trains).
They did the same in the 80s with nuclear energy.

While what Engie is doing may hurt them short term, I view this as being at the very front in a few years when the inevitable will happen.

Also, Engie owns a very large stake (I think it's 30% if I'm not mistaken) in Suez who basically does waste management (another thing of the future in my opinion: how stupid is that now waste is managed at the micro level almost everywhere? This will change)

Lastly: they already announced a dividend of 0.7€ per share for the next two years, at the current 11.65€ price that's almost 6%.

I would avoid Italian state owned companies

Hi Seppia, many thanks for your explanation. I have checked more about Engie in another forums and the opinions I have received are not very optimistic, at least in the short-term, as you say. It is changing its whole model and it will need hard measures to achieve it. The worst problem I have read about is the nuclear energy, since getting rid of it could be extremely expensive. Besides, the dividend doesn't seem sustainable in the long-term due to the cash flow needed right now for the model change. The company seems to be fastly decapitalizing.

As far as I have found, ERG is not state owned, but 63% family owned. The business is mostly focused on renewable energy and oil.

Cheers,
Dunkelheit

Sorry, you said erg, not eni, you're right.
On Engie, I guess we will see. This is a long term play for me.
German E.on is doing a similar thing and also took a beating earlier this year, but I remain confident, cleaner energy is here to stay I think, when even companies like Royal Dutch say that natural gas is their future I think it's a sign.

bought: ACM
sell (short): ALL, INTC

and in my larger portfolio I've picked up some VAW and reduced exposure to US bonds.

For ALL it is part of my long term negative view on insurance/bank corps. ACM I bought for speculation on recent events (Lake Oroville dam, infrastructure failing rather than being maintained, etc) and plan to hold at least one year. For INTC it seems that competition is catching up, more or less.